Speech - EDUCATION FOR NAVAL LEADERSHIP (1964)

This is Rickover's speech to the US Naval Academy on April 16, 1964 on the topic of Education for Naval Leadership. In the speech, Rickover covers the following major topics:

• importance of education for a naval officer

• comparison of quality of education at USNA w/ other schools

• Origin and impact of hazing

• Blaming others for deficient conditions not getting corrected

• Importance and downside of organized athletics

• Importance of morale

• Technology taking priority over rights

Quotes from Speech:

We cannot cope with this new world if our minds are like attics stored with abandoned and useless furniture. What this new world demands of us is that we learn and that we think. Only those who have been taught to think with their own minds can discover and remedy their own deficiencies.

"Many studies have sought to find a definition of "leader." To most people, the answer is simple: A leader is an active, forceful, outgoing person, the kind others look up to; the type that gets elected class president or football captain—the "big man on campus."

But there is another point of view that holds that the true leader makes no effort to impress his personality on others; he has no obvious "following." But because of him—because of the quiet influence of his ideas or his example—other people change their thinking and act in new ways."

The text is taken from the Congressional Record - Senate May 11, 1964.